


What We Believe

by skinman



Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, F/M, Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 05:57:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3477077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skinman/pseuds/skinman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can we know things that we do not believe? She didn’t want to believe, but she knew that the truth lay within her. And what if he knew... 'What if he knows it was me?'</p>
            </blockquote>





	What We Believe

She felt like she was still waiting. She could hear him, if she tried. If she concentrated, in the deep, saturated silence, she could hear his voice. She could still see him too, when her heavy eyelids finally fluttered closed, and the darkness seeped into her bones. It took her to some old and desolate plain, where nothing survived; Not even her dreams. Heavy limbs resting against crisp white sheets, hands desperately grasping at threads. Always searching for him. Old shirts that would not, and could not, be worn again. Sinking into nothing and nothingness. Can we know things that we do not believe? She didn’t want to believe, but she knew that the truth lay within her. That one, almost incomprehensible moment had been carved cruelly somewhere deep inside her with a hateful blade; it was undeniable… and inescapable. And what if he knew... _'What if he knows it was me?'_

He hadn’t screamed as he fell to his knees. Hadn't made a sound at all. He didn’t reach for her, and she didn’t reach for him. She’d been more deeply stained by the tears that had refused to fall than the ones that had. If she was forced to face the truth, Scully had lost Mulder long before that day. The thing that had returned to her, with empty eyes, and cold skin… that wasn’t him.

 _“What if there was still a chance… that he could have been saved. What if I just didn’t do enough to save him?”_ A few silent tears rolled off her chin. She was too tired now. She'd already cried till her eyes burned.

_“Agent Scully… he would have killed you.”_

_‘It...’_ She thought, _‘it would have killed me.’_

She couldn't help but wonder... if there had been a way...

_‘You can’t think like that.’_

But she did.

When her son was born she wasn’t ready to move on. To place her heart with the helpless child they held out to her. They offered her a new life, a truly new beginning. One she didn’t deserve.

She cried. First out of pain, then out of joy, and then out of a profound sense of how truly unworthy she was of this moment. When she held him she knew that this was wrong. It felt selfish, to hold their son, when he could not, and never would. Those early months were overshadowed with a guilt that clung to her as thick as tar. It covered and encased her pale skin, suffocating her each short night and receding with each dawning of the sun, bringing her back to a half-life each morning, so she could live until the grey night came again. Scully created a cage out of her skin; a façade of strength and composure, and though it stifled her, it was all she had, to stop her crumbling apart.

 _“Dana, you need help.”_ Her mother had said. Three short words Scully refused to admit to. Words she barely heard as she desperately hid her open wounds and broken edges behind the mundane acts with which she passed hours and days by. She’d become practised at giving the appearance of productivity whenever a rare guest called.

_“How are you doing?”_

_“I’m fine.”_

When her mother was gone she took her wild-fisted child and laid him on his back on the bed, curling her knees up, so she surrounded him. She ran her finger lightly from the top of his powdery forehead, down his tiny nose.

 _“You don’t know.”_ Stroking his hot, blushing cheek with the back of her pallid, weak hand, she whispered, with barely parted lips, _“How could you.”_

She doesn’t know when they took him, her chestnut haired boy, what day, what date, if it was morning or afternoon. The hours bled together then like inks on fabric, with one irreversible seemingly pointless deed after another. They took him from his crib and told her they’d keep him safe, and she knew they were right. But she didn’t want to believe. She told them she was fine, that she could care for him.

They let her hold him before they left, so she could press kisses to his chubby neck and meaty fists. They told her this wasn’t the end.

 _“It’s not for forever. Not if you don’t want it to be.”_ They said.

_“Don’t they think I can look after him?”_

An old friend had looked her straight in the eye, with an anguished gaze. He took her thin hand, and rubbed his thumb against the papery back; the feel of the tiny bones, so prominent, sent a shudder through his spine, _“It’s not William they’re worried about…”_

It wasn’t long before someone came to take her away too, and hearing the words of that old friend rattle through her with every ragged breath she took, she didn’t refuse. This was her only chance to see her child again.

_“How do you feel today, Dana?”_

Scully focused her scrutiny on her folded hands, _“I’m fine.”_

The scratch of pen against rough paper followed her answer, and then soon after the click of the door.

And so these days went on for a forever. Conversations of silence and denial; _‘I’m fine’_. The clinical, ivory sheets and uninterrupted nights brought a simple, apparent peace she hadn’t known since he’d last held her in his arms. He returned to her, in one of their sweeter moments. In one of their last moments.

_“... knowing everything that's been taken away from you. A chance for motherhood and your health and that baby. I think that... I don't know, maybe they're right.”_

Scully woke with a cry, gripping at the mattress with newfound fingers of iron. She shivered, and beads of heated sweat slid down the back of her bent neck. Perhaps… perhaps the nightmares of a fallen imposter, were more kind than memories of what she and Mulder had once had, and lost.

He’d wanted this for her. He’d wanted a child for her, a home, and a life.

_“How do you feel today, Dana?”_

Scully looked up from where her hands gripped her knees. The pale, empty room in which they sat feeling real and solid for the first time.

_“Determined.”_

There was a light now. A light and way, through the shadows and the black. She felt like she was climbing, constantly climbing, further and further. Everyday a short distance closer to that bright, radiant light. The tormenting walls of the dark cave in which she ascended, ripped and tore at her delicate flesh. At night she tended to her wounds, using his words like bandages, _“There so much more you need to do with your life. There's so much more than this.”_ She healed. Scully understood now that this was not what she had chosen, that she deserved to be saved. That she could save herself. Sometimes her foot would slip and she would fall a little while, but Dana Scully had never been one to surrender. Her skin grew firm and soft again, the edges that had once cut her to the whiteness of her bones, left mere scratches.

_“How do you feel today, Dana?”_

_“Good… really good.”_

When she left that place Scully knew she couldn’t return to where she’d been. Their son deserved better than that. She deserved better than that.

He gave her a familiar, wide, tilted smile, now complete with a set of small, white teeth. He stumbled once only as he ran toward her. He knew her. He knew now.

 _“I missed you too.”_ She admitted, pushing thick, familiar, brunet locks back from his forehead. Marvelling in him. His small, healthy form. His intelligent eyes. How he’d grown. How he looked like... No longer a harsh reminder, it had become a bittersweet gift.

That night she saw an old friend. Age had begun to touch them all, it seemed. Well… maybe not them all. Skinner’s hair was thinner, and streaked with silver, but he still wore the same round, silver frames and dark suit.

_“What will you tell your son?”_

Scully looked away, wringing her small, nimble hands roughly. She could still feel the trigger beneath her touch, the kick of the gun, the vacant look that it had given her through his hazel eyes.

_“Sometimes… some truths are better unknown.”_

She didn’t believe Mulder would begrudge her this one hidden truth.

Scully had already decided that their son would never have to carry the burden of what she had been driven to do. The act she had committed. Perhaps her bullet had not been the one to kill him… to kill it. But it was her hand that had truly ended it. She had given others the power and means to destroy what had once been the man she had given her everything to.

She had to think of another now.

 _“Where are we going?”_ His small, strong hand gripped her tighter, tighter still. Trusting that this time she would never let go.

_“There’s someone I want you to meet.”_

The sky swelled with colour before sinking into darkness; turning from golds, and purples, and reds, to pinpoints sparkling with hopeful, promising light against the impenetrable blue. Their son pressed his palms against the glass as they drove; his hot breath condensing on the cool surface was only further proof of the miracle.

She knew Mulder’s spirit wasn’t held in the cold, grey stone that stood before them, or even the damp earth beneath her feet. Scully knew Mulder would be in death, where he had been in life; defying convention, and cavorting with the stars. If there was a heaven, Mulder would have turned down God’s palace in favour of wandering eternally. She had no doubts about that. But still she stood with their child’s hand in hers, in front of a grave that had long since gone cold, and considered the moment she had arrived at.

_“There has to be an end, Scully.”_

Yes. Scully agreed. There always had to be an end, but she didn’t believe that endings were always followed by nothingness. By a numb untouchable forever. Not anymore. Hers and Mulder's time together had been cruelly and viciously cut short, but this wasn’t the end for her. Scully pulled her collar up against the gusts of sharp wind that filled the night, and lifted her gaze to the bright spots above her head, settled in the deep blue. She knew Mulder’s soul still endured there.

Mulder had always, and would always be, too beautifully stubborn to truly die. She pulled William closer, closer still, and prayed that this was a gift he had passed on.

Scully couldn't help but smile. This wasn't the end of Fox Mulder.

 


End file.
